Biden floating offshore plan
Pacific, Atlantic wind sites a big part of president’s effort to promote clean energy
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration announced plans to develop floating platforms in the deep ocean for wind towers that could power millions of homes and vastly expand offshore wind in the United States.
The plan would target sites in the Pacific Ocean off the California and Oregon coasts, as well as in the Atlantic in the Gulf of Maine.
President Joe Biden hopes to deploy up to 15 gigawatts of electricity through floating sites by 2035, enough to power 5 million homes. The administration has previously set a goal of 30 GW of offshore wind by 2030 using traditional technology that secures wind turbines to the ocean floor.
There are a handful of floating offshore platforms in the world — all in Europe — but officials said the technology is developing and could soon establish the United
States as a global leader in offshore wind.
The push for offshore wind is part of Biden’s effort to promote clean energy and address global warming. Biden has pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030. A climate-and-tax bill he signed last month would spend about $375 billion over 10 years to boost electric vehicles, jumpstart renewable energy such as solar and wind power, and develop alternative energy sources like hydrogen.
Deepwater areas in the Pacific especially have potential to vastly expand offshore wind energy in the U.S., officials said.
Two pilot projects are planned off the north and central California coast, and a third is planned in southern Oregon, officials said.
Heather Zichal, CEO of the American Clean Power Association, an industry group, called the plan a “game changer” that will spark investment in a new domestic supply chain and allow the U.S. to lead in this emerging technology. Along with incentives in the sweeping climate-andtax bill, Zichal said she expects costs for offshore wind development to dramatically decrease, allowing deployment of clean energy at the scale needed to take action to address climate change.
The Energy Department announced nearly $50 million, including funding from the bipartisan infrastructure law Biden signed last year, for research, development and demonstration work to support floating offshore wind platforms. Officials aim to cut the cost of floating offshore wind energy 70% by 2035, to $45 per megawatt hour, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said.
“We think the private sector is going to quickly see the real opportunity here not only to triple the country’s accessible offshore wind resources but to make the U.S. a global leader in manufacturing and deploying offshore wind,” she said.
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said her department has approved the nation’s first two major offshore wind projects in federal waters and has begun reviewing at least 10 more. An offshore wind lease sale off the New York and New Jersey coast set new records, she said, and a lease sale also was held in North Carolina.
The world’s first floating wind farm has been operating off Scotland’s coast since 2017. Norway-based Equinor, which operates the 30-megawatt Hywind Scotland project, is building a huge, floating offshore wind farm off Norway to provide electricity for offshore oil and gas fields.